and. in total recall there were three mechanisms that didn't work out to pretty much all sorts of ability. i have to tell me right to know what my government would want to know why i actually. thought i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. for .

welcome back to the big picture filling in for tom hartman now we continue with another edition of tom's conversations of the great minds segments tom recently sat down with bill moyers of course a journalistic icon to look back on his distinguished career and to discuss the current state of our nation's news media with a look. for

today's conversations the great minds i'm joined by an icon of television journalism is a resume includes being a organizer of the peace corps a press secretary for president lyndon johnson decades of reporting for both print and television outlets its most famous project was bill moyers journal the weekly television show that was one of the highest rated public affairs programs that run public television in two thousand and seven and two thousand and ten as many as two million viewers tuned in to hear what he had to say every single week and his accomplishments have not gone unnoticed is the recipient of more than thirty emmy awards and nine peabody awards as well as a slew of other honors and this month he released his latest book bill moyers journal the conversation continues because when he has something to say people this is why i am honored to be joined from new york tonight by none other than bill moyers bill welcome. thank you my pleasure kind of.

that's very kind of you you're one of those rare people who have impacted both media and politics it's it's it's a remarkable life that you. wish your interview with to have a smiley a week or so ago you said television isn't rural enough what did you mean by that and knowing why did the word liberal the word the george washington was so fond of become a slur. well i'd actually didn't use the word liberal somebody interpreted what i said to call for the vision to be broadcast and to be more liberal with i think there's probably a logical conclusion what i said was that we need a greater diversity of voices in television including public television we have far too many establishment porsches elite forces the bourses of elite journalists to lead experts we don't have. anough forces that come outside from outside of the

senses of consensus in a real change ideas come from the margins and and and press all of us to reconsider our conventional wisdom but what i was saying is we need fewer voices of corporate representatives more voices of working people we need fewer voices of elite journalism and more voices of citizen journalists and if that's liberal then i plead guilty because that means we're open to diversity of opinion conflicts of ideas and to a great plurality of the poor and the public well that's what i mean by that but. there are many economists for example talk with james k. galbraith two weeks ago on this program who was interviewed in your new book who are prince has a mystic about the economic future of this country because the fundamentals economic fundamentals haven't shifted back to where they were before the reagan revolution if you agree with that thesis to what extent do you think that the media

has played a role in turning politics into sports and keeping the public on in front. of the fact that that politics has become a sport is because the a lot of the only lookers through the media like to be entertained and amuse they like the blood and gore as the romans did in the coliseum and no there's very little serious alternative economic information in the mainstream media you know we have lost seven million jobs since two thousand and eight since the great collapse of two thousand and eight and james galbraith talks about this very vividly and in my new book as you said seven million jobs what is washington the baiting right now what's the mainstream it what is the mainstream media holding up to that debate they're debating deficits they're debating interest they're debating issues that have nothing to do with people who are out there who are out of work who are chronically unemployed who are struggling to keep their head up. that's why the

carnival aspect of the press is a great travesty of what we need to be talking about in this country apropos of that when when you started your career most of the news media americans consume from t.v. to newspapers magazines radio were locally owned by thousands of companies and individuals and now as ben daggett can has chronicled in his book in the various editions of his books actually are that book the media monopoly over the last decade or two about ninety percent of all the news media now that americans consume is owned or created by five giant corporations what are your observations on those years of transition and your thoughts on where we'll go from here. were you go from here depends upon the public supporting alternative independent journalists like like you tom hartman if i may be the kind of work that i have done in public broadcasting. corporate journalist tend to be. tend to be tethered

to the value system of the corporations they serve and that's going to perpetuate the old power we've seen as you said an enormous concentration of media power in the last twenty five years in particular and as that has happened as corporations have come to have vested interest in the washington and washington politics subsidies tax breaks special favors the journalists have tended not consciously but unconsciously that buy into the values into assume a way to censor themselves so that they're not really telling the story and look at what n.b.c. did not do when n.b.c. g.e. so the n.b.c. to comcast there was very little coverage of this new merger of two corporate go i ass hole in b c that's an example of how the media censors itself in response to the perceived values of the corporate giants they work for and it has meant that.

more and more they try to entertain is the biggest change i think in the press and mine has been to look out and see a country of consumers not a country of citizens you can tell a lot about a producer a journalist a correspondent and editor if you think he or she sees an audience of consumers out there to be sold something or. an audience of citizens to be informed and the big change in what has been the shift the media's attention the media's focus from a society of citizens to a society of consumers the entertainment problem as it were you you in your book one of the question's that you often ask of knows this over the years is how they reacted to that and i'm curious how you've reacted to this change over the years and for example have you ever looked at the state of the nation or its media

and felt despair or are these challenges and changes actually invigorating tedy you see them as it's as you know. a sort of take up or whatever the appropriate metaphor would be. i try to resist. the disease of despair i mean i can understand why so many people feel so many people feel despair at the moment our of our democracy is dysfunctional we no longer have a government of by and for the people representative democracy we have got to talk or sing to talk or see means the rule of the rich for the rich by the rich and that's what we have to talk or see has one purpose which is to protect wealth and that's what we're seeing in the supreme court about week you've written so. eloquently over the years and that's what we're seeing in our democracy i don't feel despair because i can't i can't function if i do i practice what what the italian political scientists gramsci call the pessimism of. the end and the

optimism of the will by that he made you see the world as it is and we journalists have to see the world without rose colored glasses we have to see the reality no matter how brutal it is but at the same time if you've seen to that. pessimism the nothing good ever happens so i wake up every morning trying to imagine a more confident future and been trying that day to do something about it that's what keeps me that's my the despair and cynicism. the message of my book is that democracy is in trouble the mark you see in america has been a series of narrow escapes and we may be running out of luck because as i said representative government is threatened at this moment by wealth power and corporate conglomerated interest but we can't give up the great progressive

reformer of the last of the early part of the last it from robert follett said that the mocker see is a life of struggle and frederick douglass said power never concedes anything without a struggle so each of us in our own way every day after do something to fight the propaganda the sentimentality and the pornography of politics do you have said that you just said that you know basically this is no longer a democracy it's a potok r.c. it seems to me that we're not fully into that new frame but we were awful awful close to it ha how would you propose or what have you seen as viable ways to break the motion in that direction toward total basically oligarchy in the united states. and well i would expect a democracy. i think just as we witness an arab uprising in the middle east we need american upper. is that we saw

a hint of it in wisconsin in opposition to the right wing idiology being imposed by the state legislature governed by by conservatives and any right wing government government and we saw people standing up and and demanding more dignity and and the protection of their interests against the power of of that state and all over the country i see examples of it i just met yesterday with a wonderful woman donna smith who works for the california nurses association who are fighting for medicare for all she has given up she was on her way from new york to washington to take part in it public peaceful nonviolent protest against the health interests that are still trying to undermine the reform the health reform of last year there's a remarkable young man you should have on your show. twenty three years old from mississippi unemployed journalists who are year out of morehouse and has decided

that that he can't just sit by and do four jobs trying to make ends meet he's out now organizing what's called us uncut to to lobby the government and the banks for the banks to pay their fair share of taxes all over the country they get no mainstream media they get no mainstream attempt no no attention from the mainstream media but all over the country people are filing standing up we just have to make sure they get they get some some of the the attention that they deserve from the media that's the only thing i know organized people is the only answer to organize money so you've got to look around find a group that's working in the interest that you think are important for the public good in this country join it and get up to more morning and make a fight of it but the week we've had the fella from us uncut and the d.c. representative actually on the program a couple of times. at the moment all history as well great great and they're based

on the uncut movement the start of the u.k. which was you know stop the cots that cameron did mr asians bringing in and in the u.k. that actually gets a lot of publicity because the because the b.b.c. and what not. yet this morning or yesterday is the front page of the washington post was this giant photo of as i recall it was spain and there's like a hundreds of thousands of people protesting the cuts that they're talking about these i.m.f. austerity cuts and things that may be coming down the road and yet there was no story it was just a pretty photo. how how is it that europe has vibrant journalism and we have in protein. question except that there's a record of independent journalism in in europe it hasn't been corporate it has been bought by by huge global issues and some of that exists of course but there's

also a tradition since world war two of europeans fighting for social democracy for a civil society that looks after the interest and values of working people that we go to have in this country for thirty years in america since the reagan administration there's been a steady right wing corporate right wing a sole role in the work in the rights of working people and you know there was a story in the times the other day about the manufacturing jobs coming back to the midwest in this country but the jobs that are being created or pay one third of the jobs that were sent overseas so they have a history of this are our previous loves to sit when it's abroad but if you they don't like this in the home they're made uncomfortable about it by the mainstream press because if that this sense succeeds it's the threat threat to the corporations for whom they work and to the relationship between the call. the

corporate powers and the state powers that represented. this sort of consensual seduction that is growing all over this country of the rights and interests of working people it's very well said we're going to take a quick break and when we come back i'd like to get into. some of the back to the sixty's for a moment if we could and some more of the things that are in your book we continue our conversations of great minds with award winning journalist bill moyers after the break. for. a. few. feet.

on the back of conversations in creative minds i'm speaking with an american icon bill moyers his latest book is titled bill moyers journal the conversation continues. bill welcome back to you you helped create the peace corps in one nine hundred sixty one i'm wondering what that time was like and what did you and your compatriots have in mind for that institution and its impact on american the world and further what might we learn now from those pretty heady times back then i remember the sixty's as a any time i mean what. well the early part of the sixty's was a time of great idealism it was permissible to be idealistic that's when the civil rights movement in the south begin with the freedom riders of fifty years ago this very year begin to really awaken the. conscience of the country to what have been

the brutal treatment for so long of of black americans i also on another front in another part of the country there was this beginning to believe that there was a moral alternative to war and that you to serve your country you didn't have to put on a uniform and go off and kill somebody you could actually go out in the peace corps and live in the neighborhoods in the villages of the world's emerging countries and provide a human service a personal contact representing america in the most basic delivery of services so i remember standing in the cold on january twenty first of nine hundred sixty one listening to john f. kennedy's campaign i had served him listening to the new president newly inaugurated president make that famous summons ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country and feeling that i wanted to be a part of

a movement that expressed the affirmative side of the american experience so i may go my way to work for the peace corps i was one of the founding organizers as you said became its deputy director and our mission was to show americans that there was a new way of being in the world that in effect you had two passports one stamped united states citizen and the other stamp citizen of the world that was the mission of the peace corps it is still important today to remember with humility and with gratitude that that there's a different way from being in the in the world as an american in straggler and a big stick that it's possible to live side by side with the world and learn share and grow together toward a more understanding a greater understanding of each other he said that was the mission of the critique of the peace corps and. but. what has changed and when did it change when did that

stop being the way that we saw ourselves as americans and then and project ourselves out into the world. i think the more militaristic our foreign policy has become over the years and you know we've had almost no year without with real peace in the world in the last twenty five years old i always been some military action of one kind or another with the increasing militarization of american society and particularly with the trav it's a tragedy of nine eleven we've we've tended not to think of turn it is to national security being being the peace corps and the economic development and person to person relationships like a can screw up is it and tend to think of it in terms of you know surveillance of all the methods and the military the the special forces and all of it that we have

been fighting two wars now for ten years after nine eleven at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives abroad and of american soldiers and the trillions of dollars and that kind of violent world in which huge forces of military forces or lose it's hard to think of one or one relationships between american citizens going abroad in the peace corps and the budget of the peace corps has been consistently cut because it doesn't have the power that it once did i have seen a lot of peace corps volunteers in the last few years they still are doing a terrific job out there representing the essential american values of friendship and openness and collaboration so it's still there thank goodness it hasn't disappeared even though there are far fewer volunteers than there were even twenty years ago but we moving a little. farther into the sixties you were lyndon johnson's press secretary is

from sixty five to sixty seven in the white house and if the reports that i've read are correct in october of sixty seven you told noddy and some cambridge that lyndon johnson saw the war in vietnam as his major legacy and as a result was insisting on victory at all costs even in the face of public opposition in your opinion is president obama now doing the same thing in afghanistan. but i think he's made the same mistake that dylan and johnson made in thinking that by escalating the number of troops he could find a he could of ultimately triumph there the tragedy of the american presidency is that as we go to war and every life that's lost every ounce of blood this bill the president becomes more and more invested in quote victory because you don't want to you know want to have to send a message to the parents of those men and women who died there that it was in vain so that's the paradox of escalation which is you know you're bound to have more

casualties in those casualties are almost bound to cause you to resolve to win the victory that is usually elusive you know the great another great tragedy of the american presidency particularly a progressive presidency is that this is a continuing cycle woodrow wilson that elected in one nine hundred twelve as a very progressive. politician within two years was within the few years was taking us to war in europe franklin roosevelt doctor. dr new deal became franklin roosevelt dr win the war after world war two happened harry truman acquired a progressive president. wrote wound up taking us to war in korea and his domestic programs were consumed. by by the war lyndon johnson sitting on my first job was not his press like a peer. i was responsible for much of the domestic policy civil rights

environmental message economic policy and all of that and suddenly with the escalation of the war in vietnam in one thousand nine hundred sixty i saw all those hopeful possibilities consumed by it by the growing ravenous may ends of the military for more and more money and more and more troops and i saw all our hopes for bringing about a great society disappeared of the quagmire of vietnam it was a very sad time a grave. for those who lost their lives both americans and the the enemies but it also represented a turning away from the possibilities of building a better society at home. if. you very well said if we could move back to the to the media for a second you are the bush appointed kath homicide as the chairman of the

corporation for public broadcasting and apparently he was a rare regular critic of you on p.b.s. you said there are times when i was threatened by radio stations to tone it down and your opinion are we. actually not even we his is the corporation for public broadcasting in general moving away from programming in the public interest. but i don't see any evidence of that yet the is corporation for you know there are good republicans and there are dangerous republicans there is there are good democrats and and bad democrats and the president president of the corporation for public broadcasting pat harrison is a public minded public spirited republican and i think she is really trying to fulfill bug public broadcasting's mission of creative diversion of the more serious of the of the public interest trying to protect the independence of public broadcasting her predecessor kind of thomas who was a rock wing operative he was

a. logical kindred spirit of karl rove and i never will forget the day that one of the trustees of the corporation for public broadcasting called me on the phone and said i just heard careless thomason who as been the chairman of the corporation for public broadcasting say i'm here to get rid of the warriors that's that's not what pat harrison would we do and i don't know or i just happen to have watched your track record and think she is doing a good job but but but tom this is an old story in the ninety's early nine hundred seventy s. president nixon and his his his a propagandist pat buchanan tried to undermine public broadcasting to. to get me off the air try to get. robin make me feel off the air try the sandy bit ochre all thir not because we were liberals but because we were reporting what they didn't

want to turn it into the official white house next only in view of reality robert go who was then senator from kansas and senate minority leader tried in the late one nine hundred eighty s. to defund public broadcasting then along comes newt gingrich the late newt gingrich in one thousand nine hundred eighty three and for trying to defund public broadcasting and then you had george w. bush and. thomas and his henchmen and the corporation for public broadcasting trying to do the same first of all they don't believe in public funding of of of of media as a matter of principle but secondly more importantly they do not believe there should be truth tellers who are calibrate the official view they do not like independent journalism let me repeat that is not true of the present president of the corporation for public broadcasting or the present president of p.b.s.

paula kerger i believe they are committed to public television in the interest of the uninformed american public unfortunately for seven straight years public broadcasting's public television's revenue has been flat and the greatest challenge facing public television at the moment is in fight the minish in resources to do the kind of quality reporting and the kind of of great programming that the american people deserve. bill moyers thanks so much for being with us here it's better the last week he put up to. important voice out there in the independent world of broadcasting thank you thank you very much sir i will that. it on the big picture this evening for more information on the stories that we've covered these visit our web site at home hartman dot com an artsy dot com you can also check out our youtube page for use of dot com slash the big picture our team russell tom

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